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It is a beautiful autumn day and from where I sit in Joseph’s apartment, I can see the glorious mountains and orange tree tops. Aahh….I love this season of transition. I feel more and more that September is the true beginning of the New Year. Maybe because it’s the start of the school year and that has stayed with me. I truly appreciate the ability of the trees to let go of their summer glory and transform. I don’t always approach change as gracefully and I am thankful to learn from nature, these wiser ways of riding life. As their leaves turn colour and prepare to fall, the tree isn’t thinking, “I’m dying, I’ve failed in being a tree.” It just is. It doesn’t resist or judge itself for losing it’s most celebrated form. In fact, what I find so special is that it is in this state of letting go and vulnerability, that the core of the tree becomes even more distinct and attractive. And when the leaves fall, that tree expands even further into the world around it, filling it with life and colour.

Imagine what one could accomplish each day without the fear of failing. What would you try if you knew that your success were assured?

I strive to explore that way of being with more awareness of what holds me back and what motivates me forward. I strive to eliminate fear from my motivations when choosing thoughts, intentions and actions.

I wrote a short story recently based on what little I know about the Binukot in the Philippines and I’m excited that it has been selected to be paired with the skills and talents of a filmmaker, Mark Borowski, in Victoria. I’m actually getting paid to contribute to this project called “Scene and Heard”! I discovered in the process of writing this short story that I actually really enjoy creative writing and I feel energized by the process when it is something that I have personally selected. Often in school I experienced writing only as a requirement and somehow that took away from my feelings of enjoyment. Is that a similar dynamic when we stop enjoying something when it becomes a requirement? Like when I wash dishes, I usually enjoy it. I like making things clean and refreshed. BUT, if I know there is an expectation or requirement that I do the dishes at a certain time or a certain way, the idea of doing dishes changes and the experience of washing the dishes is not as enjoyable, if at all.

I woke up before the sun started to come into the room today, before 7:00am. It’s Sunday and I went to sleep after 12am last night. I wasn’t tired and my body had enough rest and it wasn’t a sound or my bladder that woke me up. I was just ready and happy to wake up. This in not a rare happening. But what’s interesting is that I can’t do that during the work week when I know I must wake up for 7am so that I can go to the job that earns me my current living salary. What a joy it is to wake up simply motivated to be alive. My hope is that I can start each day with that enthusiasm and love for life, regardless of the required tasks within a day; for each day is a new gift with infinite possibilities to be surprise and delight.